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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24652360">An Overdue Breath</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu'>Nununununu</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sins of the Cities Series - K. J. Charles</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canonical Character Death, Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, Ghosts, Horror, M/M, Mystery, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:27:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,045</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24652360</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Nathaniel wakes to the feeling of a hand closing around his ankle, where the sheets have come untucked.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Justin Lazarus/Nathaniel Roy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>An Overdue Breath</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts">within_a_dream</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For Within_A_Dream. Thanks for the fantastic prompts!</p>
<p>Title from the poem 'My demons' by Sarah Boswell.</p>
<p>(Originally posted 26/07; updated for author reveals)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>Nathaniel wakes to the feeling of a hand closing around his ankle, where the sheets have come untucked.</p>
<p>The heavy floor-length curtains block most of the light from straying into the dilapidated hotel room they’d selected as theirs for the duration of their stay, making it difficult to judge the hour beyond the likelihood it can’t be long after dawn. The musty pillows are both too hard and too thin, but they did manage to get some sleep in the end last night, after a miserable few hours in soggy pyjamas unable to get warm, the incessant rain having leaked through their suitcases during the journey on foot from the small train station, the twisted old hollow logs laid out in the dusty fireplace giving off smoke that lingered around the stains on the ceiling while the tangible dampness in the air quashed each attempt at fire.</p>
<p>Nathaniel straightens his leg out a little, tugging affectionately against Justin’s grip, smiling as the fingers angle themselves to follow the movement accordingly, grip cool and firm.</p>
<p>“You’re awake early,” Nathaniel murmurs into the pillow, thinking of all the times Justin has protested rising at a decent hour in the past, hooking an arm around Nathaniel’s waist when he tried to rise and dragging him back down into bed, something Nathaniel has come to protest far less often than he should, “Did you go in search of the kitchen? I’m afraid we’re unlikely to find bacon here, but I did make sure to pack the good coffee.”</p>
<p>The feeling of Justin’s weight pressing down on the end of the bed changes as if Nathaniel’s lover is leaning closer, perhaps leaning in over him, cool fingers sliding upwards towards the back of his calf.</p>
<p>“Hm?” Still smiling, still somewhat sleepier than perhaps he should be, Nathaniel nonetheless allows himself this rare indulgence, appreciating the turnaround – instead of being the one seeking to tempt Justin into wakefulness, he decides, Justin can work to rouse him.</p>
<p>And thinking of <em>rouse</em> –</p>
<p>“You know, if you wish to come back to bed for a bit –” Nathaniel lets his tone slip into one of implication as he stretches further, his mind made up, the impulse less uncharacteristic than it would have been eight months ago, back before they met. There’s no pressing reason for them to start work or even breakfast yet – if Justin was off exploring instead of seeking food – after all, here as they are on Nathaniel’s editor’s command to ostensibly investigate for an article and Justin having offered his company and impressive powers of observation and recall, they have several days to spare to do so and no real schedule to speak of.</p>
<p>No staff are present elsewhere in the building to interrupt them or overhear any noises, the hotel closed down years ago, and Nathaniel can’t help but feel they’re due a bit of comfort after the misery of last night.</p>
<p>“Why don’t you come on back in under the covers?” He starts to raise his head, sending an arm out from amongst the sheets to reach for his lover.</p>
<p>“Nathaniel?” The door to the room opens part way, Justin inching in. He looks curved-shouldered and careworn, goatee dishevelled and his brow furrowed. He’s also chafing his arms a bit, “Why are you back in bed? I’ve been looking for you – the supplies your editor promised to have that local contact leave in the kitchen don’t seem to exist. There’s not even any coffee.”</p>
<p>His gaze darts about the room as he speaks, his concentration seemingly on seeking out the deepest parts of the shadows rather than his words, what grainy light there is now coming in from the corridor not penetrating far – reminiscent of an expression he used to adopt when out to scare some of his more boorish clients perhaps, in the past. The depth to his frown is genuine, though, a certain tension in the shape of his grey eyes – this is not <em>Justin Lazarus, Seer of London</em> <em>and part-time St Sebastian</em>, but –</p>
<p>This is Justin, unexpectedly spooked.</p>
<p>Taking a shallow breath in through his nose that comes tinged with the sour dampness of the stagnant air, Nathaniel wrenches his gaze from his lover framed in the doorway to the place he had thought Justin had been sitting, down on the end of the bed. The hand is gone from his ankle; the knowledge there in his mind that he must have been dreaming and the sound of the door opening drawing him awake – this is, of course, the logical explanation for it.</p>
<p>As much as he informs himself it is ridiculous, however, Nathaniel frowns just as Justin does and strives to deny the certainty that they are watched.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>**</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The water spills foul from the tap; they boil a pan of it on the rattling hob in the cobweb-draped kitchen, taking a circuitous route through the room to avoid brushing clothes against the mould thick on counter-tops and the walls. Nathaniel spoons them coffee into cups Justin unearths from the least unpleasant cupboard and scrubs out twice, and they pretend not to notice the flavourlessness of the disconcertingly gritty drink when the boiling should have removed the impurities.</p>
<p>Justin is still looking haunted, a description he sneers at without his usual verve when Nathaniel questions him, and he only eats one of the biscuits Sukey had slipped into their suitcase amongst their clothes.</p>
<p>The crumbs line their mouths like old soil.</p>
<p>“It’s nothing,” Justin wraps his hands around his cup, “Fucking daft, really – there’s <em>no such thing as</em> <em>ghosts</em>.” The assertion contains a wealth of derision and yet still falls flat. He pushes a hand through his hair rigidly, as if refusing to allow it to shake, “I saw evidence of attempted break-ins and places where people have no doubt tampered. The ‘spirits’ your editor’s wife is convinced exists are not particularly creative pranksters.”</p>
<p>His grey eyes are fixed on a corner of the kitchen as he says this; Nathaniel reminds himself that this is a mundane room, drear and windowless as it is, and that they definitely aren’t <em>watched</em>.</p>
<p>Justin says more quietly, and there is no artifice in him as he does so, “I just – Nathaniel, I just thought I saw –”</p>
<p>
  <em>Tony – </em>
</p>
<p>Nathaniel thinks for no rational reason whatsoever, and is intensely grateful when Justin simply licks his bloodless lips and sets his shoulders, drawing himself up with a hint of the usual determination he tends to show when out to bring the more mundane mysteries he investigates these days to light. “Right. Find out what we can, take whatever notes you need for that article, I’ll dig up those papers Mark was talking about, and get out of here in time for the afternoon train back to London? Fuck staying here another night.”</p>
<p>All Nathaniel’s earlier thoughts of an indulgent morning or days spent together have similarly disappeared; it’s like they never were.</p>
<p>“Agreed,” He nods and reaches to squeeze Justin’s shoulder reassuringly, but the other man is already sluicing out his cup and heading for the door.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>**</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A hand falls on Nathaniel’s own shoulder as he enters the hotel’s festering ballroom.</p>
<p>It’s not big enough to be called such really, nowhere approaching grand, and yet what cloth-covered furniture there is set to the sides and the broken light fixtures above imply it used to be advertised as such.</p>
<p>Nathaniel is holding a candelabrum; it is barely mid-morning, yet the light still fails to penetrate from outside even when he twitches at the nearest curtain. It offers a shower of dust and a ripping noise, as if the material long ago adhered itself to the glass, and he refrains from further investigating. What lamps there are having proven run out of gas, he’s walked through the hotel by candlelight, opening door after door to rooms set out much like the one they slept in, the altering pattern of the mould and damp on the walls seeming the only means of marking the difference. His mind oddly inattentive after the first half an hour; Justin searching elsewhere for the paperwork.</p>
<p>“Hm?” The other man must have found it; Nathaniel half turns to raise an enquiring eyebrow.</p>
<p>There’s no one there but a whisper; a graze of dislodged air probably stirred by his own movement. And yet –</p>
<p>
  <em>Tony? </em>
</p>
<p>Nathaniel doesn’t think of his old, long gone lover so often anymore, as much as it pains him to admit. Tony will always be a part of him, will always possess a place in his heart, but he is happy together with Justin and the life they’ve carved out for themselves despite everything, and he knows Tony would be glad for it.</p>
<p>At least –</p>
<p>Nathaniel is certain Tony would be glad for it. His dear, light-hearted Tony, who always saw the best in everyone.</p>
<p>There is a chill shuddering up the length of Nathaniel’s spine and creeping down his arms when he turns back to the ballroom. There is the shape of a figure there in the far end of the room, indistinct. He thinks that maybe it’s grinning at him.</p>
<p>Of course it isn’t grinning at him. There’s no one there, either.</p>
<p>“<em>Tony</em>,” says a voice by his ear.</p>
<p>For all that the pen is his best and most ferocious weapon, Nathaniel can’t find the words to describe what that voice sounded like mere seconds after he heard it. Hard, old, deep, <em>dead</em> – all these things are true, but also not. It sounded like the taste of the awful gritty coffee that had, before they came to the hotel, been so good. It sounded like the press of the grey light outside, lost amongst the curtains, and the damp and mould everywhere.</p>
<p>It sounded like those biscuits had tasted, of soil.</p>
<p>“Justin?” Nathaniel makes himself call, movement catching his attention abruptly in his peripheral vision, his heart thudding however he chides at himself for being so skittish as he swings back around.</p>
<p>Justin is standing in the doorway to the ballroom, and Nathaniel tells himself it must therefore have been his lover’s hand he felt.</p>
<p>Justin’s hair is sweat-damp, his eyes dilated, his skin pallid, clawing at his cravat as he breathes hard. Yellowed papers lie scattered at his feet.</p>
<p>“Justin?” Nathaniel takes a step towards him, back stiffening when a hand falls on his shoulder again, a scrape of something like teeth against his nape, “Tony?”</p>
<p>He didn’t mean to say the latter out loud. There is no one behind him when he turns another half-circle to look back at the ballroom, although the feeling remains of being watched.</p>
<p>There is no one in front of him when he returns his attention to the doorway seconds later.</p>
<p>“I’m the fucking Seer of London,” Justin’s voice says, reed thin and inexplicably distorted, from somewhere down the corridor, moving deeper into the belly of the hotel, “You don’t need to tell <em>me</em> about ghosts.”</p>
<p>It sounds almost like he’s speaking from somewhere underground.</p>
<p>Nathaniel takes another step, seeking to scoop up the papers Justin dropped and hasten after his lover. Cold hands wrap tight around his waist. He is naturally strong; he can break their grip. His heart cramps, lungs seizing as if something inside him seeks to paralyse at the thought.</p>
<p>“Nathaniel,” Justin’s voice echoes down that corridor, nearly inaudible, his tone much as if he might well be facing something down himself, his air of defiance brittle, forced, “The papers were all blank. That thing isn’t Tony. There’s more than one of them. <em>Run</em>.”</p>
<p>There’s a hand in Nathaniel’s hair now, the second descending from his waist to fall hard upon his hip. He could fight them off, should fight them off, should run to find his lover –</p>
<p>For all a large part of Nathaniel’s mind is shouting, screaming, straining against the hands holding him in place, he can’t move.</p>
<p><em>He can’t move</em>.</p>
<p>He can’t move he can’t speak he can’t <em>think</em> –</p>
<p>The grave stench of the shadowed figure looming so close behind him makes him choke with every gasp he fights to take.</p>
<p>The shadows are encroaching on him. When did he drop the candelabrum? There is no light at all left in the place.</p>
<p>“<em>Frankie</em>,” Is the last thing he hears Justin say, shattered.</p>
<p> </p>
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